Background to automatic enrolment
The Pensions Act 2008 introduced measures aimed at encouraging greater private saving. This includes workplace pension reforms due to come into effect in 2012. There are three key elements to the workplace pension reforms:
- New legal duties that require employers to automatically enrol their eligible workers into a qualifying pension scheme. We are introducing the new requirements over a four year period. We are phasing in the minimum contribution requirements to help both employers and individuals adjust to the additional costs gradually. How soon an employer will be affected by the change depends on:
- the size of the employer, and
- where the employer chooses to provide a money purchase arrangement (for defined benefit and hybrid pension schemes, alternative arrangements apply).
- A compliance regime enforced by The Pensions Regulator (TPR) to ensure:
- employers and others meet their new duties, and
- workers get their new rights.
- A new workplace pension scheme called NEST (National Employment Savings Trust). NEST will be one of the qualifying schemes and will be open to any employer who wants to use it to meet their duties.
DWP is responsible for the policy, legislation and overarching communications for the changes. DWP works in partnership with TPR and NEST to ensure that the programme is rolled out and maintained in the most effective way possible.
We have produced a table of staging dates by employer.
- Staging date timeline (The Pensions Regulator website)
Over the next year we plan to provide more detailed information on our website as well as TPR’s and NEST’s.
